


Obvious

by pink_shoes



Series: Deconstructions [2]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pink_shoes/pseuds/pink_shoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humans notice things sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obvious

**Author's Note:**

> This is a humor fic, and not to be taken seriously. I am not attacking any pairings or stories. I love all different sorts of fics, just like you do. Please read this in the spirit in which it was intended. The reason I chose to focus it around Starscream and Skyfire was that I needed an interfaction pairing to make the plot work and this one is hands-down my favorite. I just wanted to do a fun exploration of cultural/sociological differences between humans and TF’s.
> 
> Also, in this series, human technology has progressed much faster due to Cybertronian influence. That’s how we have internet available to the general public in the eighties.

The flesh creature seemed to be about the right age. It wasn’t a sparkling, but it wasn’t quite a fully-formatted adult, either. It sort of resembled the image that Starscream had found on its social network profile—though he would admit that all squishies looked pretty much identical to him and if not for their variations in color, he’d be completely lost.

Unfortunately, it did not take kindly to him removing a segment of its home, and now it was screaming and trying to hide behind some furniture. Starscream cycled his vents in frustration as it slipped through his digits yet again.

“You cannot outrun me, just come here—”

The stupid thing screamed again and tripped over its own pedes. Starscream grabbed it before it could hide again. Then he pulled it outside and cupped it in his servos.

“Was that so difficult? Now, are you,” Starscream paused to recall the alias, “PrincessNeko1971? What is a neko?” He knew that a ‘princess’ was a shaman femme with power over small organic creatures, but there was no result for ‘neko’ in his English databanks.

The squishy screamed yet again. It seemed to be leaking optical fluid as well.

“Can you even understand me?” Starscream shook the thing a little bit to get its attention. When the squishy did nothing except fall over and expel some fluids into his servo, he opened up his linguistic database. _“¿Entiendes? Vous comprenez? Nǐ tīngdǒng ma?_ Do not make me install yet another flesh-creature language, I won’t do it.”

“A neko is a cat!” squeaked the squishy all in one breath.

“So you can talk.” The seeker knelt down in the squishy’s backyard and drew his servos up to optic-level. “I have some questions for you, and if you even think of lying to me, I will turn your unattractive flesh creature body into an even more unattractive smear.”

The squishy made a suitably terrified sound.

“I am here regarding the text files you have uploaded to your ‘internet.’ Do you know what I am referring to?”

The squishy moved its helm up and down. He was pretty sure that was an affirmative.

“I want the names of all the mechs who provided you with the information you have been using to compile your narratives. If you do not know their names, I want descriptions. You have one klik to begin talking.”

“I…I don’t know…what you’re talking about…”

Starscream resisted the urge to throw the irritating little creature against the ground only because he knew that he could not risk leaving without the information.

“In your narratives,” said Starscream, speaking slowly for the benefit of the squishy’s brain, “you detail…certain historical events of no significance whatsoever. You could not have done so without being provided with data from another mech. I want to know who that mech was. Who was your source, flesh creature?”

“Just…I just…stuff!”

“You just stuff,” repeated Starscream. “Have I damaged your processor, or are you naturally a babbling imbicile?”

“I never talked to any transformers!” Transformers? Primus spare him, was that what the squishies were calling Cybertronians? “I swear to God I didn’t! I’ve never even met one up close in my life! I just made up half that stuff and the rest was from public documents!”

“What documents?”

“Just…stuff! I don’t know! The Autobots uploaded stuff for our scientists to look at! There’s history texts and news reports and science things! Humans like to read them! And there’s me and some other girls my age and we saw the cartoon and then we looked up some old news reports in the database and it took us hours to translate it but everything matched up and we just thought it was obvious!”

“Obvious.”

“Well, I mean, I mean, yes. I mean, a little! Please don’t squish me! I’m sorry! We didn’t even know you knew what the internet was!”

Starscream brought the squishy up to about optic level. It clung to one of his fingers for balance. When he spoke, his voice was a low hiss.

“I have kept the existence of that bond successfully hidden for thousands of vorns! If knowledge of it got out, I would be executed without a trial. That probably means little to you, but he would be killed as well, if not by his own faction, then certainly by mine. And now you, you disgusting, babbling sack of hair and meat, you have the gall to tell me that it was obvious!”

The squishy was shaking visibly. “We…I…we all just…sort of thought…didn’t know it was a secret at all…I’m sorry!”

“Frankly, I still do not believe that you were not fed information by one of my enemies. You display an unnatural knowledge of our pre-war activities. Our thesis, our projects, even our explorations…you detail them all!”

“Thesis…is…public record—”

“And what possessed you to look it up?”

“I dunno! I was curious! It seemed obvious! I’m sorry!”

“And how did you know of our exploration missions?”

“They mentioned them in the cartoon!”

Starscream paused, utterly lost, until he remembered. About a year or so ago, the humans had created a documentary of sorts on the subject of the alien invasion. It had been regarded with some amusement at first (here, Starscream’s databanks pulled up footage of an inexplicably flight-capable Prime), but was quickly forgotten about in favor of the more interesting human dramas. As far as he knew, nobody on the Nemesis had seen past the third installment.

“You mean that propaganda?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess—”

“Tell me exactly what it said.”

“It…the episode, it started with you…the Decepticons, I mean…doing something in the Artic. Some sort of energy thing, I don’t remember, the cartoon wasn’t exactly big on making sense. And you were all digging at the ice when…”

“It didn’t say anything about who arranged that mission?”

“Um. Not really. I mean, usually everything is Megatron’s idea.” Then the squishy smiled. “But it was you, wasn’t it! Oh man, that’s so obvious now! You knew he’d be there and so you came up with some silly reason why everyone needed to dig through the ice and made Megatron think it was his idea in the first place—”

_“What?!”_

The squishy cowered. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Whatever I did, I’m sorry!” It looked like it might start leaking again.

“I kept the true nature of that mission a secret from _Soundwave_! How did you determine it? Answer me!”

“I thought it was…obvious…I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t hurt me! Maybe transformers are different than humans, maybe we notice different sorts of things because our brains are different—”

“Shut up. Tell me what else you were made to believe.”

“Uh. Well, um, after you uncovered him, you told everybody about how you were partners together, before the war started. And you’d explore different planets and stuff. Then you came here, to earth. There wasn’t anything interesting around, because nothing had evolved yet, but he really wanted to check it out anyway. But then a storm—”

“Silence.” The seeker’s voice was very soft. He raised one servo to his helm. He was still staring at the flesh-creature, but his optics seemed to see something else. “I…I do not…I do not need to know any more.”

The flesh creature shut up immediately. He also wanted to tell it to wipe that pitying look off its faceplates, but that would mean acknowledging it, so he restrained himself.

“This is of lesser importance,” said Starscream. “But I wish to discuss the piece you wrote on the destruction of the Iacon Science Academy.”

The squishy’s face fell. “Aw, jeez, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even…”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t have!” Optics dimmed. “And you, you are not the only one who has written these...unauthorized biographies, though you are certainly one of the most prolific! Somehow, you creatures have all been able to determine—independently of each other—information that I have not even shared with my wingmates!”

“Well, I mean, humans like to think about things. We like stories. We like puzzles. And we especially like transformers. I think some of the stuff that freaked you out was lucky guessing, and some of it was logic. I found the news article about the attack first. I wasn’t even looking for it. I was just browsing, you know? Then I went back a little further and saw…I saw what they accused you of doing. And I figured that was why you’d done it.”

Starscream’s digits began to clench, and the squishy screamed in terror. “Please, please, don’t squish me! I’m sorry! I’ll delete everything, I swear!”

“That will do me no good if others can make the same observations. I must eliminate this problem at its source.”

“Wait,” the squishy said. “When you were reading my things…did you happen to look at any other stories? I mean, other text files?”

“No. I do not care how you miserable creatures amuse yourselves, as long as I am not involved.”

“Okay,” said the squishy. “Can you connect to the internet from here?”

“Yes.”

“Can you go to the website where I posted my text files?”

“Yes…”

“Okay. Now can you look at some of the other text files? The ones not written by me?”

There was a long pause. Then:

“Why does this document depict Prime in a relationship with his tactician? I have it on good authority that he is bonded to a femme. When did they get trapped in a cave together?”

“I'm pretty sure that didn't actually happen," said the squishy. "Look at some others.”

“Prime and…Prime and Megatron!”

The squishy giggled. “You know you like it!”

There was some more silence. When Starscream could finally speak again, he said, “It appears that our species as a whole has a proclivity for becoming trapped in caves.”

The squishy giggled again.

“And common consensus appears to be that the security director is bonded to the firetruck.”

“We like Prowl and Jazz, too,” contributed the squishy.

“Yes, I see that…Ironhide and Wheeljack?”

“Sure.”

“Ratchet and Wheeljack.”

“Yeah.”

“Wheeljack and Ironhide.”

“Why not?”

“But these are mutually exclusive! ...The minibot and his pet human?” He thought he might purge.

“I’m not really into that, but some of people are.”

“And nobody can decide if the noble is with a minibot or a scout.”

“Yeah, I can go either way on that one too,” it nodded.

“This makes no sense at all!” cried Starscream.

“Exactly!” said the squishy. It looked pleased, for some reason.

“Your species is mad!”

“We never said we weren’t! My point is, for every, uh, biography about you and Skyfire, there’s also one about you and Megatron, you and Prime, you and Soundwave…”

_“What!?”_

“No, listen! That’s a good thing! Nobody’s gonna ever suspect you and Skyfire are bonded because they’d also have to believe all the other stories we write! And like you said, a lot of the pairings are mutually exclusive, so that’s impossible.”

For the first time, Starscream was calming down. As he continued to browse the text files, he had to admit that the flesh creature appeared to be telling the truth.

“Prime and Ironhide…I knew it. Rumble and Skywarp, hah. Soundwave and Shockwave, I certainly hope not, they’re irritating enough already. Acid Storm and…and… _how the frag do you know about Sunstorm!?_ He’s a classified project!”

The squishy shrugged helplessly. Starscream went quiet, just staring at nothing.

“There seems to be a fundamental anatomical misunderstanding between our species,” he said at last.

The squishy turned pink as all the energon rushed to its faceplates. “Oh, that.”

“I can send you an explanatory videofile.”

“No. It’s okay. We know how you do it. We just like our way better.”

Starscream would have challenged that, but then he realized that he far preferred the idea of squishies using uplink cables and sparks rather than the organic mess that they called interface. As a scientist, he knew it made no logical sense whatsoever, but it just seemed…preferable. Less alien.

An incoming comm from Megatron cut off his thoughts.

[Where are you?] demanded the warlord.

[Under your berth with a knife,] said Starscream. [What do you want?]

[Get back to base now. I’ve modified my cannon, and I need a test subject.]

“I have to go,” said Starscream. “You were wise to cooperate. You will be wiser still to tell nobody what we spoke of.”

“You’re…you’re not going to squish me?”

“What’s the point? You’ll be dead in a vorn anyway.” Starscream set the squishy back down in its room.

“Wait! There’s a huge hole in my house! What am I gonna tell my parents?”

“I don’t particularly care.” Then Starscream paused. No, it wouldn’t be good if the flesh-creature told everyone that they’d just talked for nearly a cycle. The humans might get the idea that he was approachable or something, and his fellow Decepticons would immediately know something was wrong. Then they might take a closer look at the squishy…and its hobbies.

“Tell them I mistook you for a political target.” Yes. Excellent. Nobody would question the idea that he was simply attempting extortion. He took a moment to appreciate his own intellect. “If you put on a show and cry, maybe the Autobots will come and fix it themselves. I can break your arm and lend credibility to the story.”

“That’s okay,” the squishy was edging away. “I have a bruise from gym class, if you want I can show them that.”

“Very well. Do not give me a reason to ever return here.” Starscream glanced around and tried to estimate if there was enough space in the yard for a proper takeoff.

“Wait!” cried the squishy suddenly.

“Now what?”

“I’m sorry I scared you," it said, very solemnly. "And I'm sorry...for everything else, too.” 

For many, many vorns after that day, Starscream always assured himself that he’d managed to turn away from the flesh-creature before it could see him smile.

* * *

Maria Vasquez, age sixteen, was walking home from the bus stop when the police car pulled up alongside her. She expected it to drive off after a moment, but it didn’t. Instead, a window rolled down.

“Hi. Is something wrong?” she asked the shadowy form within the car. Then the officer vanished and before she had time to scream, the car had transformed itself into an Autobot.

Even though she knew he wouldn’t hurt her, she couldn’t bite back a little cry of surprise.

“You are…” the Autobot paused, “…Dizzysocks75?”

“Uh. I. Uh.” It was very weird to hear her screenname spoken aloud. “You can call me Maria…I mean, if you want…”

“Maria.” The Autobot put his hand out. Maria stepped up into his palm, using his thumb for leverage. She felt her stomach lurch as she was raised up to eye-level. “I have just one or two questions for you,” he said.

“Kay,” mumbled Maria, trying to get her voice to work.

“Recent events lead me to believe that you already know exactly who I am, but I will introduce myself anyway. My designation is Prowl. I do much of the tactical planning for the Autobots here on Earth, and I am also one of Prime’s personal advisors. As such, I am in a somewhat dangerous position even when I am not on the battlefield. Our enemies would like it very much if I were to reveal some…weakness.”

Maria nodded vigorously, mouth half-open.

“Now, I understand that you and some others have uploaded a…well, a rather alarming number of detailed text files regarding myself to your internet. While you are well within your rights as sentient beings to do so, I must tell you that Jazz and I can both say with complete certainty that we have never uttered more than a word to each other in the presence of a human. Therefore, I demand to know how you determined the existence of our bond!”

Puzzled brown eyes blinked up at large blue optics.

“Well, I thought it was obvious,” she said.


End file.
